Police bear brunt of anger over Indian city's rapes

DELHI'S police, so long seen as part of the problem of sexual violence in the Indian capital, have borne the brunt of a furious city's anger during protests over the weekend.

The city is in uproar after the gang rape on December 16 of a 23-year-old student, who, after her male companion was beaten unconscious, was grabbed on a bus by six men, gang-raped and beaten with an iron bar for more than half an hour before being thrown, naked and bleeding, from the moving vehicle onto the roadside.

Delhi carries the unhappy sobriquet of the ''rape capital of India'', but the particular brutality of this attack has sparked widespread anger.

National Crime Records Bureau figures show a quarter of India's rapes are reported in the capital, despite Delhi representing just 1.38 per cent of the country's population.

In 2011, Delhi (572) had more reported rapes than Mumbai (221), Kolkata (46), Chennai (76), Bangalore (97) and Hyderabad (59) combined and, to December 15 this year, the number of rapes has jumped to 661.

Reporting rates are believed to be higher in Delhi than elsewhere, but many attacks go unreported.

On Saturday, thousands of demonstrators, mostly young men and women, protested against the culture of sexual violence in the city, and what they view as official apathy towards the problem.

As the marchers approached Raisina Hill, home to the Prime Minister's office and the Presidential Palace, they were pushed back by 1500 police. As the demonstration grew louder and larger, police resorted to water cannon and tear-gas.

All six of the alleged assailants from last Sunday week's attack have been arrested, but Delhi's police are viewed by many as corrupt, lazy and incompetent, and of routinely dismissing sex assault complaints.

Senior officers are regularly quoted as saying that women who are assaulted have themselves to blame - for wearing jeans, for being out at night, for talking to boys.

Even senior female politicians have blamed women for attacks. The Chief Minister of Delhi, Sheila Dikshit, said last week she hated the ''rape capital'' tag and supported the death penalty for rapists.

But last year, after a young woman was raped and murdered on the city's outskirts, her response was ''all by herself till 3am at night … you should not be so adventurous''.

Bloomberg news service reports India will amend criminal laws to include stronger punishment, and possibly the death penalty, for ''rarest of the rare cases of sexual assault'' like the gang rape of a 23-year-old woman. The government in a statement said it has also set up a commission to investigate the incident.

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